


Judgment Bolt

by MilayaMilenZeal



Series: Long Live the Queen [24]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Buried memories, Gen, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 04:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10756335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilayaMilenZeal/pseuds/MilayaMilenZeal
Summary: M.E. 784Regina’s always wondered about the time where she got her scar, but she’s never been allowed to return to that place. But now that she’s out in the open with her friends, she intends to figure out just what happened.





	Judgment Bolt

Regina always finds it funny how the mind works at times. There are times when she can go as far back in her memories to 2 years old, to her first memory of the Chocobos, and yet there are times where she needs another person to help remind her of something that’s happened barely a few months ago. Even at age 17, this hasn’t changed for her, and while it’s not always a bad thing, it does get annoying from time to time.

And one of the times that she wishes she has more knowledge of is the situation that had given her the large scar across her abdomen. Sure, she knows roughly where she got it, and she’s even managed to drag the exact location out of Gladio at one point, but she’d been forced to promise her Dad she’d never go back there.

Now she understands his worry, and she certainly doesn’t want to cause him any more worry… but at the same time, she _needs_ to know…

She _has_ to know…

 

“ _KYAAH!!_ ”

“GAH!! DOMI!!”

“Sorry sorry!! I-I just…! S-something just dripped on my neck…!”

Regina’s not sure if she wants to laugh or groan. On one hand, Domi’s reaction was pretty hilarious… but on the other hand, the scream _had_ been a loud one, and it echoes around the cave still…

Libby sighs as she pushes up her glasses again, while shining her flashlight down the dark corridors of the cave ahead of them. “So… this is the place, huh?”

“According to Gladio, yeah…” Regina murmurs as she starts to slowly move along the rocky floors and deeper into Fociaugh Hollow. She’s sure her Dad would never let her hear the end of it if he ever caught wind of this, so it’s a good thing she’s going here with people she knows she can trust to keep silent about it. “This is apparently where I was ‘snatched away’ to back when I was like… six? No wait; five, my bad.”

“Pleasant,” Terry mumbles as she moves after, and Domi scrambles to keep up. “So… what? Did the imps snatch you up from… wherever?”

“I dunno… can’t remember,” Regina admits as she shines her light along the walls, trying to find something—anything, really—that was even remotely familiar. “I just remember the thunder.”

“Thunder?” Domi repeats curiously.

“Yeah…” Regina pauses to climb up a rocky outcropping, and the others follow. “It was raining. Heavily. I remember that much… and I remember the thunder, because it was so loud… but that’s it.”

“Very mysterious…” Libby hums. “Perhaps it was so terrifying for you at that age that your mind simply made you forget. Are you sure you wish to remember something of that magnitude?”

“I’m not a child anymore, Libby,” Regina points out calmly. “I know it’s silly to worry about things like this… but I feel like there was… _something important_ … something I’m forgetting and something I _shouldn’t_ be forgetting.”

Her friends don’t respond to the words, and that’s fine. There’s really not much else to say.

She stops then. Looks around. And then moves down to her knees.

“What are you doing??” Domi asks.

“Getting back to my earlier level,” Regina quips simply. “Trying to see if things look more familiar from down here.”

Regina’s never been ridiculously tall, and while’s she certainly not short either, there’s no denying the fact that, at one point, she was more than half her current height. And in the current situation, it was probably an idea to try and put herself in the shoes of her past self.

“…”

“…Any luck?”

“Shut up, Terry…”

 _Six_ , this was annoying… _nothing_ looked even remotely like how she remembered it… if she even remembered it. If anything, she felt like she was seeing everything here for the first time.

“Look, if we’re done wandering the dark like this, can we head back? Before dinner, preferably?”

Suddenly, Terry’s words click something on in the back of Regina’s head and her eyes widen in realization.

“Girls, kill the light.”

“Wait what?!”

“I said _kill it!!_ ”

One by one the lights click off, and the cave is plunged into darkness.

“… _it’s so dark!!_ ” Domi whines, and it’s answered immediately by Libby saying: “Please be quiet, Domi. You’re drawing unneeded attention to us.”

But Regina isn’t listening. Her eyes are growing accustomed to the dark, and she’s looking around slowly, cautiously, at the walls and the dark corridors ahead of her. She lifts a hand to her flashlight, clicks it on, briefly, and then kills it again.

“…now what?” Terry mumbles, but Libby lets out an “ah”, clearly understanding what Regina’s doing;

Simulating a flash of lightning.

 

_The cave is dark and little Regina whimpers a little as she scampers inside. It’s dark, yes, but it’s cold and wet outside, and she doesn’t want to be outside any longer. There’s a crack of thunder, a flash of light and she yowls, scurrying further along, hands along the walls. And as she goes, she feels like she’s getting close… but… close to what??_

 

Regina blinks and then stands up, turning on her flashlight again. “Let’s go…”

The others turn on their lights and follow after her.

The path is relatively linear, so it’s not so hard to get lost, but it is definitely an unpleasant place to be. Their hands are itching to reach for their weapons, but they hold off and continue along silently.

“These caves aren’t natural, are they?” Domi asks softly after a moment.

“It does not appear that way, no,” Libby murmurs. “At the very least, it’s been dug out… though this appears to have been ages ago.”

“Lovely… this ain’t some dumb burial ground, is it?”

“I highly doubt that, Terry.”

Regina doesn’t join in the conversation for once… she’s too busy looking around. It’s her first time being in here since _that day_ , and nothing looks remotely familiar.

…and yet…

 

_“…hello?” she calls out, softly, because she’s scared of what she’ll attract in the dark. Regina continues to scamper along, trying not to whimper as her soaked socks squish against rocks below her feet. It’s cold and she’s afraid, but she keeps pressing on… why though?_

 

“…Regina,” Libby calls, making the brunette look over. “Have you remembered anything?”

“…a little…” Regina admits, as she continues along. “But they’re just snippets… nothing solid.”

“Hey, at least it’s something, right?” Terry offers as she follows along, and Domi’s nodding his head in agreement.

As they continue, though, Domi asks: “Um… shouldn’t there be like… imps, or something?”

“I believe there’ve been a lot of hunts recently to deal with the daemons in here,” Libby explains. “So there’s very few of them left. And we should be glad for that.”

“I-I am glad! I’m just saying…”

Regina smiles a little at the conversation, but she says nothing else.

 

“…holy _CRAP!_ ” Terry hisses out as they step out into the wide open area. “What… IS this place!?”

“It… it looks like… a n-nest…?” Domi almost squeaks out.

Libby frowns as she walks a little closer, but not too close, adjusting her glasses. “…it would appear so. Though it’s been abandoned for years, I would guess.”

“Okay, so what kinda beast d’ya think was over here?” Terry asks, her hand itching on her polearm already.

The bespectacled girl hums in thought as she regards the area. There’s the mangled remains of human skeletons, but there doesn’t appear to be any signs of rot, past or present, so all flesh and tissue was likely removed early on. There’s also a lot of armor and weaponry lying around, scattered and broken, rusty from disuse and the passage of time, but it was clear it’d been hoarded, at some point. The nest was adorned with the armors and the less sharp weapons, but not entirely. And even though the area’s been abandoned by whatever had made the nest long ago, there’s a distinct lack of any real daemon activity. And a quick glance around the floor confirmed Libby’s suspicion.

“Something serpentine, I suspect,” she says simply.

Domi whimpers a bit, his hands along his guns, but he doesn’t draw them just yet.

“Thankfully; whatever was here before seems to have left long ago.”

“ _Whew…_ ”

Regina again doesn’t join in. She looks around and she blinks slowly… and then she walks.

“Regina???” her friends call out, but she’s not listening.

She just walks… and after only a short walk, she stops… and stares.

 

_Regina stares in awe as she steps up to the glowing… thing. She doesn’t know what it is, but it’s bright and glowing and looks so pretty. It crackles and the sound is somehow relaxing. As she steps up to the thing, she raises a tiny hand. She’s not sure what she’s gonna do, but after a moment of consideration, she reaches out and touches the glowing thing…_

_She almost cries out as something hot and crackling goes through her arm, and she almost jumps back, but she doesn’t and instead stays put because… because it’s… familiar…?_

_As she blinks her eyes, she spots something she hadn’t noticed before… or… some one…_

_She doesn’t know him, but the way the old man looks at her seems even more familiar than the feeling of the surge of… something from before. He watches her quietly, and runs a hand through his long beard._

_As she looks up, she blinks and… why do her eyes feel so weird? She’s not sure what’s wrong with her eyes… because she can’t see her own eyes, but he’s not looking at her weirdly or anything, so it can’t be that weird, can it?_

_He says something then, but the words are… distorted. She remembers vaguely understanding the words, but she can’t bring the words to mind anymore._

_As quickly as it began though, as quickly does it end._

_She blinks in confusion and looks at her hand… and she blinks at the staff that’s now appeared along the back of her hand with the horse head. She’s pretty sure that wasn’t there before…_

 

“Regina!”

She jumps in surprise, and whirls around to the others. “Huh…? Wha…?”

“Are you okay, Regi?” Terry asks, clearly worried. “You’ve just been… standing there.”

“Y-yeah…” she chokes out. “I-I’m okay…”

“…Regina, what’s with your eyes?”

“My… eyes…?”

Libby steps up to her and lifts her flashlight, frowning. She doesn’t say anything for a long time, but the dark frown definitely worries Regina.

“…they’re glowing.”

“…what?”

She blinks, but then, rapidly, she reaches in her pocket and pulls out her camera. She flips the lens to face her after turning it on, and takes a quick picture, making sure the flash is off, for once.

When she turns the camera around and brings up the picture, she’s looking right into her own eyes… and they’re definitely glowing… and glowing _violet_ …

“What… the _fuck?!_ ”

 

No one speaks of the incident as they head back. The trip’s only given them more questions than it’s given them answers, and Regina can’t tell them what she remembers, because none of it makes sense anymore. She lies in the bed of the caravan at Wiz’s Chocobo Outpost, facing the wall and just breathing slowly.

She can’t get over it… over that man she saw there… the words he said to her…

…and despite the words of wisdom, she wishes now that she’d never gone back into Fociaugh Hollow…

**Author's Note:**

> Didn't get a lot of votes last time... but oh well. Voting's still open from "Diamond Dust", so either leave it there or put your (new) vote here.


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